Today we’d like to introduce you to Dia Parker.
Hi Dia, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
It’s an arduous journey for women and girls growing out of poverty in the United States. Many of us are tempted to surrender our freedom and thoughts to the first man willing to care for us and the children we feel prompted to give birth to as soon as we are able. There I was surrounded by an insurmountable peak of poverty with no idea how to apply for college, what to major in, or even how to make friends. There I was in high school, trying not to be awkward, needing to be pretty, and feeling that I should just be smart instead. There I was convinced that a few workshops, a couple of scholarships, some prom dresses and all the volunteer hours in the world couldn’t even scratch the surface of the needs that we faced at Cross Keys High School. There I was, dead wrong.
Athena’s Warehouse (AW) did more than provide me with a scholarship that helped me to stay on campus my freshman year of college or provide me with a fabulous senior prom dress that fit like a glove; Athena’s taught me about the magic that is born when women work together to solve social issues. There is something inexplicably powerful about transferring feminine energy back and forth in gossip, in song, in movement, in affirmations, and that power was made clear by this microscopic nonprofit organization called Athena’s Warehouse. Until I interacted with AW, I thought that non-profit work was something that “the-old-rich&-white” did in their leisure to assuage guilt, or to hide money from the government, or to feel in control of one more thing in the world- like the lives of the “unfortunate.” But in those workshops after school, I didn’t feel seen as “unfortunate” the volunteers looked at me and saw themselves reflected.
Now at 29 years old, I am the second Executive Director of Athena’s Warehouse, following in the footsteps of my mentor, former State House Representative Bee Nguyen. I didn’t plan on becoming a social entrepreneur, if you had asked that inelegant mousy junior in a high school version of me, you would have heard her/my plans to become a physician/a neurologist… But I could not have known how deeply poverty would impact my collegiate experience leaving my family vulnerable to gentrification and me in a whirlpool of debt that impacts my family and life to this day.
Thanks to Athena’s Warehouse, The Cross Keys Foundation, Sister Stroizer, Pastor Freeman, Elder Patrickson, Elder Houston, Sister Statham, Brother & Sister Britton, Sister Rhonda Madison, Ms. Angela Tonn, Mrs. Tracy Vax, Mr. Jacob Eismier, Ms. Katrina Cole and my grandmother I made into college at the esteemed Oglethorpe University in the fall of 2012. I entered OU as a biology major with a pre-medical focus and picked up a minor in psychology along the way. I wasn’t ready for college at all. I was a mediocre writer and my math skills were nonexistent. I was especially ill-prepared for the mental exhaustion and I would later realize in 2021 was “burn out.” It was during my junior year of college that my family was displaced from our apartment complex and home of 15 years.
I was working in the counseling department at the university that year and I was also working as an aftercare assistant at a private school in Decatur. I had never learned to drive so I would take a 1-hour bus ride there and back to work and campus. It was beyond exhausting and after I settled into this routine we received notice that we had 28 days to move. While we searched for a new place to live, we spoke with neighbors gathered in front of the leasing office, everyone was furious and scared. Many relied on their children as interpreters as we parsed out our rights as tenants. I recall explaining to a child that his mother had the right to her deposit monies since the landlord violated the lease. Most had been residents in this apartment for decades, we were not transient renters, we were not a monolith or some mystical cultural melting pot. This was a thriving community, rich in social capital, a community where we took care of one another. I was there on the move-out day, we left behind a green honda accord and I saw the new house in Stone Mountain where my mother expected me to stay. I took the smallest room, my mother’s income wasn’t high enough on her own to get the place in her name, the lease was in my name.
After we found a new home, I began to attend meetings about affordable housing and gentrification. All of my free time was spent volunteering for local nonprofits, especially the ones that had given me scholarships that had made it possible for me to attend college. One such nonprofit, Athena’s Warehouse, stood out in my memory and harbored a special place in my heart. It was where I had seen my mentor start and run her own nonprofit as my colleagues and I began brainstorming about the issues in our community. I knew that we could start our own non-profit.
In 2017, we formed Vecinos de Buford Hwy, an organization working with tenants across several small cities and two counties to educate them on their rights as tenants. We wanted people to feel dignified in their homes and take ownership of their neighborhoods to promote the change they saw fit. I served as the Executive Director of both Athena’s Warehouse and Vecinos de Buford Hwy during the 2020 pandemic. I did not require a medical degree to heal my community. I needed to learn how to uplift the gifts already in the community so that it could begin to heal itself. In 2020 Vecinos de Buford Hwy distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent assistance to over 100 families all over the state of Georgia with a focus on large families and single mothers.
Although I have helped to found a nonprofit, nonprofits represent one part of the multisector interdisciplinary approach towards social change. So I am learning more about the role of private corporations and emerging financial technology which can fill in gaps that nonprofits cannot while studying at Agnes Scott College pursuing an MA in Social Innovation. For my community, social innovation is more than just a multidisciplinary think-tank charged with the task of ending systemic oppressions; it is also the essential vehicle which can steer us all toward freedom. I will not rest until the most vulnerable members of our society have equitable access to success. I have dedicated my life to serving my community.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I wasn’t always confident and that’s been difficult since telling my story is part the work I do. I’ve found through community building at the Lola that I’m not alone in lacking confidence. The Lola is a coworking space in Midtown Atlanta curated for women solo- entrepreneurs, freelancers, and founders. I can see the amazing women and gender non-conforming femmes I’ve met at the Lola let a lack of confidence prevent them from living their truth. It’s essential in my daily work as a role model for 30-50 young women, showing up and bringing experts to them each week at my old high school, that I appear to be a confident person. I’ve found their youthful faces to be the greatest motivation to challenge me to do better. No matter what happens, I have to put myself first and believe wholeheartedly that change is possible and that equity can be achieved one day. This requires me to believe in myself and take a “puss in boots” approach to life. Like puss in boots, I’m just a maiden pretending to be a lady of high esteem. Even if it’s not true that I’m this powerful change-maker and innovator, if I keep believing it and telling it to people then it’ll become true.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Art has always been how I’ve healed myself. Beyond self-expression, art is vital to me so that I can continue to be agile in all aspects of my professional and personal life. As someone with no formal art training, it’s been difficult to call myself an “artist.” But as someone who always doodled in the margins and finds true rest in surrendering to the artistic process I’m finding it easier to link my creative tendencies to practical life outcomes.
My favorite medium is acrylic on glass, I love bright colors and my artist mantra is “the key to dismantling challenges in life is using every crayon in the crayon box.”
In elementary school a new art teacher arrived at our school, Ms.Fox. For a final assignment, she encouraged us to create a mixed-media interpretation of a basic still-life element. All semester I had been working on a piece featuring flowers in a vase. I was frustrated with the flatness of watercolor painting and didn’t know how to create dimension and movement. Finally, Ms. Fox suggested I try a new medium and my love for oil pastels was born. I created my first mixed media piece which I call “Elementary Vases.” I still love using oil pastels on paper & canvas but I find myself surrounded by acrylic on glass.
My art is irreverent, bright, bold and unapologetically feminine. My art is not for everyone, not everyone will like my art, some will say it isn’t art at all. My art is for me and me alone. However where there is one there is one hundred, we are a multitude, so if you like what I do then my launching Etsy shop is for you.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was a book worm and when I wasn’t reading, I was trying to make art out of whatever I could get my hands on. I was an eerily quiet child and found it difficult to make friends with my peers. In middle school, I found an interest in anime and comic books which helped to bridge the gap of friendship and gave me a shared interest with my peers. Because of my quiet nature, it was easy for me to be a good student and my mother instilled in me an appreciation for learning. Wherever my big brother DeAngelo went, there I was too. I’m my mom’s only girl so she was extremely overprotective of me and forced my brother to play bodyguard. I spent a lot of time writing my thoughts in my diary, contemplating the world’s problems and why no one seemed interested in solving them.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.athenaswarehouse.org
- Instagram: @athenaswarehouse
- Facebook: @athenaswarehouse
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dia-parker-4477b097/
- Twitter: @athenaswh
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuxjugVUfxnF_Llb7wAhPJQ
- Other: linktr.ee/diaparker
